The Houghton College Class of ’66 included two young folks who were meant for each other but didn’t know it yet.

Well, the young man didn’t know it. It was obvious to friends of Robert Hughes and Linda Button, that the two should be together. Hughes, a rail fan with a hot sports car, wasn’t particularly interested then in a wife. But with prompting from friends and encouragement from the young lady — “she chased me,” he recalled — Hughes found himself on a few dates.

“We flew kites once ... we did an airplane ride,” said Robert Hughes, whose wife, Linda B. Hughes, died April 17 at the Hospeace House in Naples. She was 68.

The two began spending more time together, which included riding around in Robert’s 1958 silver Triumph. On one such ride in “The Beast,” Hughes recalled, “we flipped that Triumph, and escaped with our lives — senior year of college, one of our earliest dates.” They ended up upside-down in the weeds, top down, on the hood and trunk. They had to wriggle out of the seat belts.

“TR-3s were known as ‘coffins,’ they liked to flip,” Hughes said. “Yet Linda stayed with me.”

After about a year together, living apart in separate rooming houses in Rochester, Hughes said it was time to pop the question. “To make it easier to be together, I suggested we get married,” he recalled. “She had to think about it.”

They were married Dec. 30, 1967.

A native of Steuben County, Linda B. Hughes retired as a computer programmer from Thomson Publishing in Rochester and worked after retirement at the West Bloomfield Post Office. The couple lived in West Bloomfield.

Linda’s generosity and support extended throughout their more than four decades of marriage, Robert said. They shared many interests, such as her love for vegetable gardening, with Linda planting and Robert behind the rototiller. Linda also made jam from their own berry bushes and together, they enjoyed strawberry picking.

And Linda accompanied Robert on many of his travels as a rail fan. Treks included to Horseshoe Curve National Historic Site west of Altoona, Pa., to Tehachapi Loop in California, the line Southern Pacific Railroad built, and everywhere in between.